He swallowed. “Hold me tightly.”
Her arms were small yet strong as they cinched around his waist. He felt her press her cheek to his chest, her ear resting against his heart.
Zen drew a deep breath, lifted his other hand, and began to trace. The Seal came to him from rote memorization, each stroke and its function glowing brightly in his mind as his qì flowed out from the tip of his index finger. The strokes for earth and earth, facing each other from the farthest points of the circle, separated by lines of distance. A swirl here, a dot there, designating departure, then destination.
Footsteps drummed against the forest floor; the sound of sword metal rang out beyond the clearing. Eyes closed, Zen swept his arm in a full circle. Ending met beginning, yin met yáng, and the Seal opened to him in a blaze of black fire. As it took effect, Zen focused on Skies’ End. It rose from his memory, mountains undulating as far as the eye could see, wreathed in cloud and mist and laced with rivers of white, verdant with life and beauty. He saw it more closely: the temples nestled within, all shell-white walls and gray-tiled roofscurving toward the sky. To the unblemished boulder standing at the top of the mountain steps, announcing the area’s name in flowing strokes of calligraphy:
Where the Rivers Flow and the Skies End
A straight stroke, connecting departure and destination. And then a sweep of a circle to close.
Energy flowed from him and into his Seal—the principle of equivalent exchange per the laws of practitioning. His Seal drank and drank, blooming into life from his qì, and Zen—Zen gave and gave, feeling his limbs numb and his lungs shrivel. He was sinking underwater, drowning, the light above him dimming—and still the Seal continued to take.
Spots bloomed before his eyes; he sagged against the girl and felt her respond, hands tightening around his waist.It’s too much. It was too much, from the very start.
His heart slowed. His consciousness spiraled. Down, down, to the edge of the darkness, the abyss opening up to swallow him whole.
And then, from within, a voice rose up to envelop him.
I am here.
Black flame erupted in his vision, encircling his arms and legs, propelling him forward. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, something stirred to life: a deep, rumbling echo followed by a rush of power. Qì flooded him like a gasp of fresh air. The Gate Seal was suddenly so small, so insignificant, and Zen could not recall a time when performing it might have been difficult.
This is but a taste.He and that voice spoke, their thoughts blending into one.Unleash me, and you could have all the power in the world.
No,no,he could not, hewould not.This thing inside himwas an abomination, a monstrosity, an erroneous blight to the Way that his master had somehow tolerated for all these cycles. What did not belong under the path of practitioning must be annihilated.
With all the strength he could muster, Zen pulled back and away from that black abyss. When his eyes cleared, the flames of his Seal had wrapped around them. An illusion shimmered before him: green mountains, pale mist, a line of herons making their way across the sky like a sweep of a brush in a painting. A familiar sight, a safe place.
Home.
Zen closed his eyes, held tight to Lan. She shuddered against him, pressing into his chest with a small whimper.
Together, they tumbled forward.
—
Zen landed on soft grass, wet mud. It took him a moment to orient himself. The air was suddenly thinner, the cold sinking into his bones with a damp chill. From all around came the song of birds, the chirp of insects, the brush of wind through leaves.
Ahead, a mountain rose, with no discernible path and no distinguishable markings but for an old, gnarled pine that leaned toward him, branches jagged and extending like outstretched arms, as though to welcome him home.
Zen loosed a long breath. This was the Most Hospitable Pine, a marker that the first grandmaster of the school had set. Only those who had learned the true location of the school would know that to walk beneath it was to trigger the Boundary Seal: an ancient and commonly used Seal that marked the borders of a certain territory. Criteria for passage varied. In this case, the Seal was drawn to allow entry for those who wished to enter Skies’ End with no intention of harm. It wasa clever Seal: those who stumbled unwittingly into the area would simply meet rising fog and a mountain path that disappeared the farther in they forged. And those who entered with the intention to harm the School of the White Pines and its occupants would be met with the wrath of practitioners long dead and buried in this earth, their spirits forever tethered to protecting the sanctity of the school.
Even successfully passing through the Boundary Seal meant a climb of nearly a thousand stone steps before one reached the school’s gates. Most disciples bypassed this by using the Light Arts, propelling themselves ten, twenty steps upward at once, but Zen had barely the strength to stand.
In his current state, he would need help.
“Lan,” he mumbled, but that was when he felt sticky warmth against his hand and realized that she had gone unusually still in his arms. They were lying at the foot of the mountain in a tangle, her páo against his pants, her arms still around his waist. Blood drenched the grass beneath them, a discordant pool of red in the gently woven landscape of greens and grays.
Panic cut through his fog of exhaustion when he found the source: a metal arrow protruding from her side. He recalled the way she’d twitched in his arms right before the Gate Seal had swallowed them—the sound she’d made. It hadn’t been out of fear; it had been out of pain.
Lan coughed, a wet, hacking sound. Blood dribbled from her lips, winding a crimson path down her chin. He took in the curves of her cheeks, the dark crescents of her lashes, that wide, fast-talking mouth, so quick to smile beyond pain. Without help, she would die.
My mother told me that it is the duty of those with power to protect those without.
He could barely summon the energy to move, let aloneperform a Seal. But Zen knew that if he clawed into that abyss deep inside him, he would find power brewing like a storm.
He closed his eyes. Reached.
